In many information technology (IT) infrastructures, updates and maintenance patches to computing device configurations need to be rolled out frequently to ensure that systems are up-to-date with stable configurations and protected from vulnerability. However, due to complexities, scale and frequent changes in IT infrastructure during the course of service, computing devices can be overlooked in some systems. Once such devices become undiscoverable, they cannot be tracked, maintained or audited. Moreover, such devices are often only rediscovered when they cause catastrophic failures.
The cost of non-discoverability of one server can lead to gross service level agreement (SLA) breaches, resulting in potentially significant financial losses. This can be particularly problematic because, being undiscovered, unaccounted server failures are more difficult to diagnose, trace and recover from.
Additionally, complexities in tracking and maintenance of computing devices in dynamic networks have increased due to an increase of heterogeneous computing devices. This may leave infrastructure vulnerable to software failures as well as intrusion and exploitation by unwanted programs and/or users.
Existing approaches for infrastructure maintenance include agent-based maintenance and management. However, such approaches require knowledge of the system a priori. Additionally, existing agent-less management approaches disadvantageously cannot locate every workstation and server that needs to be managed within a system.